A common enough question in music forums -  but some may find my experiences useful i hope!

The case for vinyl.  Until recently i bought all my new and second hand music on vinyl. On good quality equipment you find recordings vary greatly due to the mastering techniques used in the studio, but in the late 60's and early 70's real hi-fi was for the rich and up till the 1980's most people played their music on dansettes and those awful music centres, and everything sounded the same. Many recordings were mastered for these things, especially singles. i have found many early lp pressings to be the most reliable in terms of quality. i have some original  Buddy Holly lp's that sound absolutely stunning, thick vinyl / audiophile / virgin vinyl  pressings don't all sound vastly different from their counterparts, i have found some thin floppy bargain bin discs that have been brilliant. The biggest drawbacks with vinyl concerns user-friendliness: noise during quiet passages, also they collect dust, are easily scratched and you can't skip from track to track with a remote or play them in the car, yet the thrill of owning an original shiny black disc and the artwork/ inserts to gaze at is uncomparable to cd packaging.

The case for cd. When cd's first came generally available in the mid - 80's Mark Knopfler said "now everyone can hear what our music sounds like to us in the studio" and the German conductor Von Karajan was equally enthusiastic and claimed digital and cd was the future of recorded music. in those days the technology was still in its infancy and had many shortcomings, longevity was one issue, mastering was another. Decent Hi-fi equipment was much more affordable by this time and everyone was dumping their music centres and marvelling how great the new cd's sounded on their brand new systems, a fantasic improvement over their old outdated ones! in recent years digital technology has come along in leaps and bounds but i have found overall digital is or can be better than vinyl (CD,SACD,DVD-A) but is not a general rule as some vinyl originals have sounded much better than cd/remastered cd's  in my own comparison tests (Layla, Rush's Hold Your Fire/Grace albums, Yes Big Generator all sound a lot better to me on vinyl, although the early Robert Plant and the Led Zeppelin remastered albums, also Rick Wakeman's Six Wives masterpiece, seem to have have been improved on cd). Saying that, the case is the same with vinyl it depends what you play it on - a good quality player (around £500+)  should be standard for the best sound quality.

Overall vinyl is not finished yet and even seems to have enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, so although i will buy all my new music on cd I won't be dumping any of my vinyl collection yet!

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ let's not go there - at least not in this thread. agreed?

Well do you disagree that a cheap vinyl player for the price for forexample at $250 sounds better than a cd player for $250?

Lindsay Lohan wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ let's not go there - at least not in this thread. agreed? Well do you disagree that a cheap vinyl player for the price for forexample at $250 sounds better than a cd player for $250?

I dont agree.....................is that cheap anyway? its more mid price isnt it? Is that US dollars? Hm maybe it is cheap!

Lindsay Lohan wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ let's not go there - at least not in this thread. agreed? Well do you disagree that a cheap vinyl player for the price for forexample at $250 sounds better than a cd player for $250?

Yes I do. But discussing that here in this thread is rather off topic. It's not good CD player vs. cheap CD player.

Lindsay Lohan wrote: Do you prefer CD because it is more practical? Why not go the full step to mp3 then? Thats even more practical?

It sounds better...thats why.

Snow Dog wrote: Lindsay Lohan wrote: Do you prefer CD because it is more practical? Why not go the full step to mp3 then? Thats even more practical? It sounds better...thats why.

It sounds better than vinyl??? Ah well i give up

But vinyl is still a crap polymer for analog discs - although better than shellac of the old 78's, admittedly - but with plastic techology having evolved phenomenally 50 or more years since vinyl was first introduced, its about time a far better quality plastic or elastomer be used - they are certainly available - which

• doesn't pick up static
• doesn't  scratch so easily, indeed positively scratch resistant
• doesn't warp
• gives a far higher level of reproduction from the master, gives longer life to the sub-masters
• comes in any colour you like

CD are made from polycarbonate metallised with pure aluminium, which is typical protected from oxidation by an acrylic-urethane lacquer, and as such 25 years on still is pretty cutting edge combination of materials.

oliverstoned wrote: Those who say that simply don't know. A good Rega Planar 3 explodes most CD players. It's like that, and theres nothing to do to change it. Digital doesn't works, that's sad. However, with much investment and optiization, you can reach an acceptable level of satisfaction on CD. But if you put a good vynil on a good turntable beside, you cry.

What can you do if most of the music you like is not even published on vinyl? Does that mean that you'll never be able to really enjoy the music (only "acceptable" is certainly not good enough)?

Eetu Pellonpää wrote: I think CD is like having a normal cup of coffee, and vinyl is then like an espresso with belgian chocolates with a glass of armagnac!

How about listening to CD while having an espresso with belgian chocolates with a glass of armagnac?

MikeEnRegalia wrote: Eetu Pellonpää wrote: I think CD is like having a normal cup of coffee, and vinyl is then like an espresso with belgian chocolates with a glass of armagnac!   How about listening to CD while having an espresso with belgian chocolates with a glass of armagnac?

No! A gramophone!  Well, a CD would go in emergency situation.

oliverstoned wrote: Ridiculous! even a used tube does better than a solid state! Same for vynil versus digital.

 I remember my old tube guitar amp with worn tubes ... it sounded disgraceful! Low frequency sounds actually made the small metal particles inside the tubes vibrate and create awful noises!

Face it: A tube is similar to a light bulb. I may last much longer, but at some time it will break and need to be replaced.

I like them both. they both have their advantages.

Dick Heath wrote: But vinyl is still a crap polymer for analog discs - although better than shellac of the old 78's, admittedly - but with plastic techology having evolved phenomenally 50 or more years since vinyl was first introduced, its about time a far better quality plastic or elastomer be used - they are certainly available - which doesn't pick up static doesn't  scratch so easily, indeed positively scratch resistant doesn't warp gives a far higher level of reproduction from the master, gives longer life to the sub-masters comes in any colour you like CD are made from polycarbonate metallised with pure aluminium, which is typical protected from oxidation by an acrylic-urethane lacquer, and as such 25 years on still is pretty cutting edge combination of materials.

Wow, that's pretty interesting.

Seriously though, I'm in the slow process of ripping most of my several hundred vinyl albums to mp3 and putting the ones I want to take out of the house on CD.  I can't really tell the difference as far as quality since my turntable is the trusty $109 US Sony PS-LX250H with a cheap $30 stylus, but when I see the amount of the analog spikes that get cut off when converted to digital, I do sometimes wonder if I'm missing anything.

The biggest advantage to having music on a digital media is that I can rip my CDs to my hard drive and if the original ever gets damaged, I can recreate it from mp3 files.  You can't do that with vinyl, and since most of my vinyl albums are more than 20 years old (and quite a few of them are long out of print), they would be expensive (or impossible) to replace. 

I'm pretty sure the fine humanitarians who run the music industry don't have any kind of convenient replacement policy for damaged albums.

goose wrote: Digital trumps CD? That doesn't even begin to make sense..

It's odd ... sometimes, when I'm listening to some stuff that I ripped from CD in 192kbps WMA, it sounds really amazing and leaves nothing to be desired ... then again sometimes the compression artifacts jump right at me and destroy my listening experience. I don't know why that happens ... it's not just differences in the quality of the files, it also has a lot to do with your current situation (stress) and a whole bunch of other factors not related to music.

BTW: While it's actually impossible for a compressed version of some source to sound better than the source, there are some explanations:

• The compressed version was ripped from a better source (e.g. the remastered CD)
• The compressed version is in 24bit/96khz (my new Creative X-Fi can create that from 16bit/44.1khz).

The only reason why I miss tyhe Vinyll is because the beautiful art covers.

But CD lasts more, as another person said, the vinyl suffers degradation with  each reproduction and looses quality, it's a fact that a needle scratching plastic material causes damage each and every time you play the album, no matter how much you take care of an old LP it will sound terrible after several listens.

You can't play a vynil in your car and cassettes suck.

The laser beam of a cd player is not solid so it causes absolutely no degradation of the CD, you can listen it 1,000 times and will sound exactly the same if you have a minimum care.

Can be reproduced for your personal use (if you own the original album according to law) with absolutely no loss of quality.

So I have to stay with the CD.

Iván

Flyingsod wrote: Be very glad if you can't hear the difference between cd and vinyl. I can't and I love it. No reason for me to spend 1000 bucks just for a cd player, god that would suck. For me it breaks down like this...Cd's are better because they never develop pops and cliks. Vinyl is better just becuase its cooler artwork wise. To me cd's have zero artisitic draw. They just are not big enough to matter. its like having a poster of the mona lisa compared to having just a postcard. no one proudly hangs a postcard over the mantle :)  For what its worth I still have and play all my vinyl. I buy and play cd's. One  important thing though, you can't clean your stash on a jewel case

Well, I wasn't going to bring that last part up but that was a real advantage of double albums! 

Of course cds and downloads are better than vinyl, that's the nature of technology to improve the sound quality and durability.  You get no argument from me.  Just comparing the LP version of "Selling England" to my new remastered cd is like night and day.  I just miss the emphasis on and importance of album art in the new age.  That's why I treasure my old LPs.

Oliverstoned wrote:

False that vynil is torn after a few passages. Torn is a hard word, but I have almost 2,000 vinyls, and even when I can't be more careful with them, after a few passages there are noises, this is inevitable. Some are scratched (What was easier than with CD's), but that's because lack of care in a specific case or an accident. With a GOOD cartridge on a good turntable, playing a good record, it doesn't get torn... Physic laws are clear any two solid things in constant contact will sufer degradation. As long as a needle touches the surface of a vinyl, both will suffer, despite the quality. I have a Dual with all those weights at the end of the arm to be graduateds, and always suffers. And no, cassette doesn't sucks... Analogic reproduction of an LP to a Cassette causes a certain loss of quality, that's also a fact, that's why each time you duplicate a cassette from another cassette, the quality loss is more evident. Cassettes are affected by heat, fungus (Well Lma is a city with 95% of humidity average), and also suffer degradation because the tape touches the playing and/or recording head, so in a shorter time than a LP will loose quality. There was another problem, it was  harder to select songs, and when you did it, the constant FFD or Rewind, will cause that the tape leght change and of course a distortion of the sound. When you copy a CD to a CDR there's absolutely no loss of quality. Believe me, I was raised with LP's, I love them, I keep and play carefully each and everyone, but with my CD's I have lets say 1% of the problems than with LP's. Iván

oliverstoned wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ and with CDs you don't have any noise ... at least unless you listen to your music at unreal volume. False. High ends players on transparent systems reveals noise on MOST OF the cds, even some DDD ones!! Surprising, isn't it? The paradox is that we audiophiles are happy when we hear noise on CDs: cause it shows how transparent and revealant the digital set up is.

 Of course there is noise on CDs. But the noise you hear on most recordings was already there on the master tape.the signal to noise ratio on a CD is 96 dB (unless I'm much mistaken), which is much more than on any vinyl or cassette. That means that with a perfectly mastered CD with the volume turned up so loud that the loudest parts of the recording would reach 96 dB, the noise would still not be audible.

Politician wrote: I think the question is unanswerable: it depends entirely upon the mastering. I have some CD reissues that beat the vinyl originals hands down for sound quality, and I have some vinyl originals that sound vastly better than the CD reissues. It's practically impossible to compare like for like.

you have it there in a nutshell, my son!

oliverstoned wrote: It destroys your musical experience? That's not odd, that's digital!

You should become a politician, oliver! You're great at misinterpreting and wrong quoting.

BTW: Nice picture in your sig!

oliverstoned wrote: Thanks for the comment about my sig. Nice collage indeed. You said that digital artifacts -make worse by over compression- sometimes destroyed your musical exp, that's it?

Yes ... but only sometimes. It depends on many factors:

• How much compression (128, 192, 256, etc.)
• The system you play it on
• The mood you're in
• The environment (noises)
• ...

If I had to answer the question "does lossy compression (wma, mp3, ogg, etc) destroy your listening experience?" without any "buts" or "ifs", my answer would be:

No.

marktheshark wrote: You have a good point oliver, even at 50,000 kps the holes will never be filled.

That is a conceit. The human ear is very well understood by science, and one of the estabilshed facts is that it doesn't have an unlimited resolution. It is true that the standard audio CD resolution is at the threshold ... there are situations (depending on the waveform of the signal) where the digital signal contains small mistakes which are audible. But these mistakes are really not audible as "harshness". Oliver (and others) will always deny that and say that they can easily hear the difference on their system. But on the other hand that hasn't been proven yet ... which I find strange. IF the difference would be so easy to hear, even sceptics like myself could not possibly deny it. So a company selling audiophile equipment could simply set up "listening centers" all over the world where people can go and hear the difference for themselves.

That hasn't been done yet. Why? Because the difference is not nearly has big or easy to hear. It is in fact so small that audiophiles are even afraid of listening tests (at least they keep avoiding them). 

oliverstoned wrote: "IF the difference would be so easy to hear, even sceptics like myself could not possibly deny it." The problem is that a system needs to be fully optimized to really work. And you won't find it in shops, unfortunatly. But at my home, yes! And all the ones who tried were convinced!

But then WHY don't you find it in shops? I'm sure that there would be a market for a system like that. And what does that have to do with the vinyl/CD discussion ... I mean, were vinyls designed for 20,000 EUR systems? No.

oliverstoned wrote: So, one more time, your pseudo scientific education makes you negate something as basic as power pollution?

Hey, don't offend the professors who taught me!

oliverstoned wrote: For example, if you're listening to a tuner (radio), and then plug a CD player on the same line/plug, you 'll hear a styrong "shhh". Why?

I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. I'm not deaf, and trust me - if there was a strong "shhh", I would hear it. But there isn't.

oliverstoned wrote: Cause CD players use cut-out power alimentation (alimentation à découpage) i'm not sure there's a good translation in english. These kind of power alimentation reject a lot of electric pollution. That's why we use power filters and that's why it's strongly advised to separate digital from the rest of the system.

"Gobbledegook", that's what this is to me. Let's recap: You're not a technician, you said yourself that you don't understand the technical aspects of power conversion/amplification, yet you insist that what you are saying (and which you don't understand yourself) makes sense?

oliverstoned wrote: Even more basic: the respect of the good power phase sense. If you reverse the power phase, the device is out-of-phase, which results in a great harshness, a huge loss of dynamic, etc...

Crap. The power supply converts the alternate current into direct current, which has no phase. Please don't talk about things which you know nothing about. Of course there are good power supplies and bad powersupplies, cheap ones and expensive ones.

oliverstoned wrote: http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/system-tweaking_e.html - http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/system-tweaking_e.html

That's an interesting article! My comments:

• Polarity: I'm not buying it. As I said above, alternating current has no polarity ...
• Phase: This is a non-issue as well. Only if some speakers (or - like the article said - some drivers in the speakers are somehow working with reversed phase, then there would be a problem. But unless something is very wrong in your amp, the original phase of the signal is always preserved, and there is no way for it to slightly degrade.
• Physical Decoupling: Yes, I agree that this has a huge effect on the sound quality. But opinions are divided on how to get it right - I think there are several approaches that are ok.

oliverstoned wrote: ...of course, don't try to do the tests at home, cause it would not be revealant as you need a minimum of quality devices, and "that you are using reasonable quality interconnects".

That's where the "voodoo" starts.

oliverstoned wrote: It's impressive and overall efficient indeed!

What's the point of all that shielding and protecting against electric pollution on the last few meters of the power cord anyway ... inside the wall it is not really shielded at all.